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The Human Right to Citizenship: New Book by Barbara von Rütte
Is there an effective and enforceable individual human right to citizenship? That is the central question of a new book by Dr. Barbara von Rütte. Based on a human rights approach, in this book she argues for a right to citizenship on the basis of a person's effective connections to a state. "The Human Right to Citizenship" is based on von Rütte's dissertation and was published by Brill in December 2022. It is available in Open Access.
The book offers a comprehensive analysis of the right to citizenship in international and regional human rights law. It critically reflects on the limitations of state sovereignty in nationality matters and situates the right to citizenship within the existing human rights framework. It identifies the scope and content of the right to citizenship by looking not only at statelessness, deprivation of citizenship or dual citizenship, but more broadly at acquisition, loss and enjoyment of citizenship in a migration context. Exploring the intersection of international migration, human rights law and belonging, the book provides a timely argument for recognizing a right to the citizenship of a specific state on the basis of one’s effective connections to that state according to the principle of jus nexi.
Dr. iur. Barbara von Rütte is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for European Global Studies. She received her doctorate in the field of international law from the University of Berne and has worked for the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen and Free University of Berlin. In addition, she was a consultant for the Council of Europe and is a member of the Swiss Federal Commission on Migration. In her research, she focuses on questions of belonging, discrimination, and democracy; nationality, citizenship, and statelessness; Swiss and international migration law; international human rights protection and public international law; as well as constitutional law and general administrative law.
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